Building Reusable Template Components
Templating System : Developer Guide : User GuideMost page layouts can be separated into smaller components, many of which may appear in different contexts throughout a site. Examples include:
- A box or section of the page listing contextual links related to the contents of the page.
- A list of comments on the contents of the page.
- A search box, user poll, or other small embedded form.
- Reports and other administrative pages, where the employee may wish to assemble multiple panels of information on a single page.
- Many popular portal sites allow users to customize their home pages by choosing and arranging a set of small layout components within a table grid.
The templating system makes it easy to build reusable components for any of the above scenarios. The basic process is to build a container template, which delineates the skeletal layout of the page. Component templates may then be placed in the container template with the include tag. The container may pass arguments to the components as needed for personalization or any other purpose.
